Heartland: Selling Out Science in School

I'm Corey Husic, and I'm a high school student in Pennsylvania. It's come to my attention that you are prepared to spend a significant amount of money on a “global warming curriculum” to teach kids that climate change isn't real.

That's right. According to your own budget documents, you want to hand teachers a curriculum that says global warming is “a major scientific controversy” and that carbon dioxide might not even be a pollutant.

Please be advised: Your entire premise is false. The reality is that our climate is changing now and human activities are a primary cause. I’m just a high school student, so please don’t take my word for it. Just ask any National Academy of Science in the world or just about any actual climate scientist.

Given who pays your bills, your plan doesn’t come as a surprise. According to your own documents, your organization is funded by coal and oil companies with a financial stake in denying climate science — not to mention tobacco companies that tried to convince us smoking doesn't cause cancer.

My generation is already experiencing a very different climate from our parents and grandparents. We will be the ones responsible for making sure coastal cities are able to withstand rising sea levels. We are the ones who will have to protect ourselves from weather extremes like stronger hurricanes, longer droughts and hotter heat waves. Instead of trying to undermine the science that shows humans are causing climate change, we should be learning how those changes are going to affect us and what we can do about it. In other words, teach us something useful.

We respectfully demand that you cease and desist your effort to bring climate change denial into our schools.

Previous Comments

“The Chicago-based free market Heartlans Institute
has called in the FBI and threatened other legal action against a
global warming proponent who has admitted stealing emails from the
institute in a bid to embarrass and discredit the group’s questioning of
climate change.

Heartland officials [stated] that they have been in talks with theFBI over the case against prominent global warming proponent Peter
Gleick, co-founder of the respected Pacific Institute. Heartland is
getting ready to reveal their probe of the affair, which they hope theFBI will act on.”

Your posts betray the fact that you’re talking about something other than science, Hank. Even the conservative Washington Examiner refers to Heartland as a “free market” institute. That’s got nothing to do with climate science. So, what’s a “free market” institute involving itself is science?

Similarly you talk about the BBC’s “pro-green views and for being a strong supporter of the AGW movement” when in fact that is nothing more than accepting the established science.

Take a look at Chris Mooney’s post about bad powerpoint presentations. You shuold be struck by the fact that the AGU’s meeting involves tens of thousands of scientists and AAAS about eight thousand. Those are big numbers of people engaged in science. Compare that to anything Heartland has thrown.

The point is, Heartland is a political organization, not scientific. If they disagree with the research, they should go try and get some papers published in the established journals.

“This strikes at the very roots of truth and freedom in a democratic society, something I would have felt the American people would find abhorrent,”

Further funding will go to climate blogger and former meteorologist Anthony Watts for a web-based project aiming to demonstrate problems in the US network of temperature monitoring stations - an issue whose irrelevance to the big questions of climate change was emphatically demonstrated last year by the Berkeley Earth Project, which found station quality was not a factor in modern measurements of global warming.

Heartland is not unique. We still have no idea, two years after its formation, of who funds the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) in the UK, nor what the funders’ motives are.

Who’s raising a flag now for openness in the lobbies of climate change debate?

That’s astounding Lara! Juddith Curry being a denier, running a denier blog, not writing something supportive about Gleick or how the denial industry is largely just paid to misinform, not practice science?

“Heartland is one of a number of think-tanks and institutions that I work with. Sometimes I’m paid an honorarium, sometimes expenses and sometimes I do it pro-bono.”

Professor Carter is certainly correct here. He is indeed an advisor on a number of “think-tanks” and groups. In addition to Heartland, Professor Carter is an advisor to the Institute for Public Affairs (Aus), The Galileo Movement (Aus), the Science and Public Policy Institute (US), the International Climate Science Coalition (US/Canada), the Australian Climate Science Coalition, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (UK) and Repeal the Act (UK). He was a founding advisor to the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition.

Professor Carter added: “The details of any of these payments are private to me. I can’t imagine that Heartland has released this document – so the question is, how this document was released.”

Professor Carter said: “Scientists are paid not to have agendas or opinions, but to summarise the scientific evidence.”

Now I have to say I found this last statement pretty rich, coming from someone who is continually writing opinion pieces for newspapers and websites.

“Professional scientists cannot have their opinion bought,” he said, adding it was not important who funded research, but whether or not it was correct.

This is an odd assertion for Professor Carter to make, given that he has regularly over the years attempted to suggest that mainstream climate scientists are motivated by research dollars.

Oddly, on Professor Carter’s webpage he chooses to state that he receives no research funding from “special interest organisations such as environmental groups, energy companies or government departments”.

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.